BOULDER -- The city of Longmont will take responsibility for designing and building a replacement for the Sunset Street bridge over the St. Vrain River that was destroyed in last month's flood, under an intergovernmental agreement approved by Boulder County's commissioners on Tuesday morning and by the Longmont City Council on Tuesday night.

But that replacement bridge won't come until late 2014, at the earliest.

The bridge lies within unincorporated Boulder County, and the county previously has had the primary responsibility for maintaining the bridge and the short stretch of Sunset that lies outside Longmont's city limits.

City manager Harold Dominguez told the council he was appreciative of the quick work his and the county's staff had put into forging the agreement.

"This is a fairly lengthy IGA, it's got a lot of points in it, and I think it was completed in less than a week," Dominguez said.

The IGA notes that the segment of Sunset Street between Boston Avenue and the BNSF Railroad tracks, including the washed-out bridge, "serves as a primary transportation connection" for north-south traffic, as well as providing access and serving as a pedestrian underpass for the city's St. Vrain Greenway system.

The IGA says work is expected to begin this fall on designing the bridge replacement and repairing the segments of Sunset Street approaching the bridge.

Construction of the bridge and the street improvements is expected to begin next summer, "depending on the availability of funding," according to the agreement.

"This thing could be closed upwards of a year," Dale Rademacher, the director of the city's public works and natural resources department, told the City Council Tuesday night.

One of the reasons for the delay, aside from the complicated site engineering and bridge design work that must go on, is the city's plan to save around a quarter million dollars by not putting in a temporary bridge of some sort, which Dominguez said would cost between $200,000 to $300,000, only to be torn out when a permanent bridge was built.

"We would like to move forward and do a permanent fix, versus spending the $200,000 to $300,000 to put in a temporary fix," Dominguez said.

"The design of Sunset Street ... will include roadway widening necessary to facilitate one travel lane in each direction, a center left turn lane, on-street bike lanes, and pedestrian improvements," the agreement states, although next summer's construction of street improvements will only include those "needed to match current roadway function prior to flooding and any improvements approved by the Federal Highway Administration."

Boulder County will be the official applicant for federal funding of the Sunset Street bridge and street improvements, with the city serving as the county's contractor. The city and Boulder County will be equally responsible for all design and construction costs related to the bridge and street improvements for which there is no federal reimbursement.

The intergovernmental agreement also states that Longmont will initiate annexation proceedings for the unincorporated areas adjacent to Sunset and Boston streets within 90 days after completion of the entire future Sunset Street corridor improvements between Boston Avenue and the BNSF tracks.

The agreement also gives Longmont responsibility for building a temporary emergency road to give the city access to Longmont's Ralph Price Reservoir, a critical water source for the city. Boulder County owns the eastern portion of the old flood-destroyed road, County Road 80, and the city owns the western portion, Longmont Dam Road, where it becomes a private road on city--owned land.

The temporary access road would allow the city to get back into the area for cleanup, repairs in the Button Rock Preserve area and the dredging of Longmont Reservoir, work that must be done to re-establish water delivery from the reservoir to the city's water treatment facilities.

"Longmont Dam is completely filled with debris," Rademacher said in a film recapping the flood damage that was shown to council Tuesday night. "The gravel banks are completely spilled over into the reservoir, and I've never seen that in my career here in Longmont."

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